


Poems

by WahlBuilder



Series: Languages of Love [13]
Category: Mars: War Logs, The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Poetry, Bad Puns, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21606835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Scum and Phobos have been exchanging poems.
Relationships: Phobos (The Technomancer)/Scum (Mars: War Logs)
Series: Languages of Love [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1277777
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Poems

_Your voice last morning_  
_Left me eager to hear more.  
_ _Aching to meet you again._

Scum lowers the small card, the poem on it in an overly flourished handwriting in handsome green ink. He strokes the rounded topmost-right corner of the card then places it on a rack that holds three dozen more of these. Some of them are not paper, but treated leaves of the Auroran pineapple, others are the tender bark of a creamy colour though Scum isn’t exactly sure what kind of tree it comes from. Some are dyed before being written on. The corners of some are decorated with inky flourishes, mostly floral. One has a star and planets map—the one that is carved on Phobos’s body.

All of them carry frivolous examples of terribly astonishing and astonishingly terrible verse. Scum can admit that his own cards—some bearing replies, others initiating an exchange—are rather plain, and his hand isn’t as good with holding a pen as Phobos’s, even as his mind is good with words. Scum does have to maintain extensive correspondence. It’s good that _Lahmu_ understands Valleian dotted script. It doesn’t strain Scum much.

But this exchange of poems that’s been going on for a while now, started as a joke, is important. It is also, plainly, great fun. Sometimes they stumble through unexpected misunderstandings of words: Scum finds with slight amusement that he’s picked much from his brushes with the Auroran war prisoners. But the opportunity to use his words not for a grand ideal or for soothing pain, but this, frivolously, like words are meant to be used for amusement alone rather than serve the building of the world, is liberating.

He finds that sometimes he falls into rhetorical mode without even meaning to, and feels confined by his own words: they are his primary armour, his tool, his weapon, the ground he builds things on, the chain-cutters he carries—but such an arsenal is very heavy, the harness required to carry it is constructing. Using them for something airy, like mists that sometimes descend into the bowl of the Valley in the morning—there and gone—eases out that weight. Reminds Scum that not everything is a tool for serious work. Besides, taking himself too seriously leads to terrible places he doesn’t wish to ever visit, much alone build his domicile in.

So he takes a simple card and a pen resting near the cup that serves as his inkwell, thinks for a few moments, then writes.

_My dearest friend! The breadth of your shoulders haunts my dreams. Come, so it could haunt my waking hours also._


End file.
